What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear these words “foster care?” A program established by the government that is beneficial for children whose parents aren’t financially, mentally or emotionally stable enough to take care of their children, and these services are overseen by various child protection agencies, depending on the country in view.
Well, ideally that is correct. The intentions behind foster care services are genuine: to help these children have a better life. Sad to say, but the truth is good intentions aren’t just enough to make things work. Intentions aren’t enough to make a planned action yield desirable results. Hence, a considerable amount of effort has been put in place by the government to make the foster care system a success.
“Success” is an interesting word, it implies that an attempt yields desirable outcome. It could be subjective though, because we all have our definitions of success. But in this article, I would try as much as possible to be objective in the best way that I can.
Moreover, the foster care system have several effects on these kids and some of those effects would be discussed in this article.
1. Trust Issues
While in foster homes or orphanages or both, many children face abuse, emotionally and sometimes physically, either by other foster kids or the adults that are supposed to provide care for these kids. Such violation can/would have negative effect on the abused children. Hence, these abused children find it hard to trust anyone in the future, as their perception about the world has changed. For they would see people extending hands of friendship to them as though they are seeking to get their selfish desires satisfied.
As an adult, I personally have had my fair share of betrayal in life. Anytime I’m betrayed, disappointed or exploited, it becomes even more difficult for me to trust people. However, maturity and assistance from knowledgeable individuals have helped me to deal with this. Now if this can cause such emotional tension and stress for an adult, it would extremely be difficult to deal with as a child.
2. Instability in the Child’s Life
To bring up children whom are balanced mentally and emotionally there need to be a level of stability in their life. Even as adults we need stability to be balanced in these areas. However, a foster child moves about 7 times on average from one to home to another. This is detrimental to these kids, especially in a tender age. When a person lacks stability in life, the resultant effect is finding it hard to form lasting relationships with people.
Later in life, this could pose a really big problem for the children whom grew up with such instability, as most grow up becoming unstable individuals. Consequently, relationships like marriages need a healthy level of stability, but when one lack the ability to invest stability to a marital union, such union tends to fade off with time. Hence, leading to failed marriages in the future.
3. Feeling Unwanted
Some children are taken from their parents by children protection agencies at a very tender age. As a result, these kids may not fully understand the reason for their adoption from their real parents. Therefore, some assume that they were never wanted by their real parents and that was why they gave them up.
To make it worse, some foster kids get rejected severally by various foster homes, making them feel even more miserable about themselves. Almost 32% of foster kids wait for three years or more before being adopted. And more than 15,000 foster kids have been waiting for the past five or more to be adopted.
4. Unemployed and Homeless
Recent studies have shown that youth who have left foster care are more likely to be high school drop outs than those in the general population. Thereby becoming unemployed, and dependent on public assistance. Thus most of them find themselves in prisons, others homeless, or becoming parents at a very early age, hence, continuing the "foster loop."
5. Lack of Adequate Care
25 states out of the 50 states in the US do not meet the federal standard of keeping children safe while in care. Nevertheless, more than half of the kids in foster care are not taken care of properly, and thus affect the overall health of these children. Some do not wear good clothes and/or being fed with good diet.
6. Tainted Understanding of What a Family Means
Being raised in a family filled with love of a mother, father and even siblings have physical, psychological, emotional and mental impact on the child’s life. Most children have an emotional attachment to either or both parents, and this is fundamental for the development of a child.
In a scenario where a child grows without this attachment, it affects the child's understanding of what a family means and this can lead to effects already mentioned.
7. Deteriorating Health Problems
According to a study conducted by Elizabeth Wall-Wieler, a doctoral candidate with the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy. She mentioned that:
"Research has shown that the children often suffer and we see much higher rates of suicide attempts and suicides among children… but now we also know this has really bad consequences for mothers," - Elizabeth Wall-Wieler
In this research conducted with her colleagues in the University of Manitoba. Wall-Wieler explained that:
"We saw that in the two years leading up to the child being taken into care, these mothers had much higher rates of mental illness, treatment use, and social instability, but in the two years after, their mental health deteriorated much more and they used much more treatments, indicating that having a child taken into care can actually have a really detrimental effect for her health and wellbeing."
In conclusion, adopting the children whose parents are not able to support their children as a result of lack of financial buoyancy is not the best course of action. What these parents actually need is financial support not taking their loving kids away from them.
Furthermore, the foster care system is imperfect and heavily flawed. The question again is "have the foster care system failed us?"
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